


The Summer Prince

by ishafel



Category: Aksuma - Elizabeth E. Wein
Genre: Gen, Yuletide 2004
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 21:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1279231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That which does not kill us makes us stronger; so it is with Medraut and Lleu.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Summer Prince

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Manon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manon/gifts).



The Summer Prince

Aunt,

I regret that I cannot send you Medraut. I have need of him yet.

Lleu son of Artos Prince of Britain

And so with those words I have defanged the serpent. It took only words; there is nothing she can do to me now. I never knew a man could fear a woman the way Medraut fears his mother-the way our father fears her. As if she were not only cruel but also powerful. They do not seem to understand that from a distance words are the only tyranny she can muster. Her weapons are dangerous in their time and place but they are no more dangerous than swords, only because they are a woman's weapons.

She is angry with Medraut but she is no angrier than our father was, or Goewin. All she has now are her poisons; her children and her brother and her husband-her hopes of a kingdom-have escaped her. And yet, if I am not afraid of her, still I hate her. Her letters seem as innocent as a child's but every word is a barb that cuts Medraut to the quick. Now I burn her letters unopened, and Medraut is learning to say her name without going pale.

A month ago I would have been glad to watch him bleed. I might even have taken a turn at wielding the knife. Medraut has been my protector since he came from Morgause that winter, and saved my life. But now it is I who am his protector. I have seen him stripped of all his defenses. I have held his very life in my hands. I would no more send him back to Morgause now than I would send him to his death.

That long terrible journey back to Camlan, and the end so unexpected, will be with me forever. I was so angry with Medraut, so determined that he should not win, that Morgause should not win. It made me wonder if this is what our father and Morgause feel for one another. If this burning hatred is all that holds them together, where once there was love.

There is more that I could tell Morgause, of course. I could tell her that my first memory is of Medraut. I remember him leaning over me, impossibly vast and pale. I remember reaching for him, even then. It is not a real memory, of course; it is only something I have been told about. But I remember it. It is my first memory of him, of my brother, and then for years I can remember very little else. 

We were eight when he went away to Africa as our father's envoy; I know this because Goewin knows this. But of myself, the boy who wrote letters to him until he was eleven, of what Lleu thought of Medraut I have no memory. Did I love him, admire him, fear him? Did I feel anything at all for him? 

He came back when I was fourteen and saved my life, and I hated him for it. He was everything I was not and could never be. I thought, then, that he was my cousin and not my brother. I am not sure, if I had always known-if it would have changed anything. He was the son our father wanted, in everything but name; he was healthy and strong and quick in mind and body. He loved the things our father loved-the things our father was-and he wanted nothing more than to be our father's heir. 

He taught me to hunt. He taught me to kill. He taught me that there was a barbaric and splendid beauty in the hunt and in the kill. He taught me that everyone has parts of themselves that they never show to anyone. And he taught me to find that part of myself.

And yet he was kind to me, knowing that I would supplant him. Even when he wanted me dead he was kind to me. I am not sure even now what that means, if it is a measure of greatness or of folly. Medraut taught me to love the lonely dark places on the edges of things as well as the sunlit plains, but he could not teach me to understand them. 

Medraut is as much a mystery to me, even now, as the greatest height or the deepest depth. Sometimes I watch him, his moonlight pale hair, his sure and capable hands, and his ability to immerse himself in healing or in killing. I wonder how it is we can be brothers, two sons of the same father, and be so different. Of the things I have done, which are neither many nor great, I count having him love me as the greatest.

He does love me, Medraut, as he never loved his mother or our father; not only loves me but trusts me. It is a burden I am not sure I can bear and yet I would not give it up for anything. With his love goes his loyalty and he is loyal to the death. There was a time when Morgause had both of these: no longer. I do not think that he will ever go back to her now, not even if all of us are lost. She held him because he believed she loved him as no one else did, but now that hold has been lost.

Medraut is as beautiful and wild as a hawk, and as ill suited to the role he must play. It is my responsibility to make sure that it is a role he can play, to bind with love what force cannot hold. Morgause's weapon is poison; mine is Medraut, and he will fly straight and true from my hand.

I would like to be the sort of king who has no need of such weapons. A king who keeps the peace by treaty or by guile and not by the sword. And for that I have Goewin, who of all of us is most like our father. But there is war coming, war in the west. The Saxons are gathering like wolves in winter, and they must be answered. There was a time when Medraut and I were always at one another's throats, but now we will ride to war together, as brothers do.


End file.
